Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Grief and Atheism

I was ten years old when my Grandaddy died, and I clearly remember being told that he was "watching me from heaven." It's a little hard to put into words how completely disconcerting it was to think for years that I was being watched, pretty much all of the time. It was like Santa Claus all over again, without the enticement of new toys in December.

When I was eighteen, one of my dear aunts passed away, and my crying was curtailed at the funeral home by my grandmother, who calmly told me I was being selfish, as my aunt was in a better place. I still picture my grandmother sitting in that hallway, stoic and dry-eyed, which strikes me as a strange image to have of her on the day that she buried her eldest daughter.

In both of the above cases, as with every funeral I've attended (and there have unfortunately been many because of my large extended family), the comfort I received was not from these ideas of heaven, but from the love and sharing of grief with friends and family members around me.

One of the questions I've received multiple times from people who discover I'm an atheist is "What about heaven? How can you think your mom is just gone?" The first issue I have with this question is that it assumes I have somehow chosen to be an atheist, which simply is not the case. Disbelief is not a choice. I could no more will myself to believe in a god than I could will myself to believe in Santa again.

The second issue I have with the above questions is that the Christian idea of heaven is simply not comforting to me. There is nothing about it that makes sense. I read a beautiful article written on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks by blogger Greta Christina that explains how I feel about the idea of religion and heaven being comforting. She writes:

It’s comforting to think that you and your loved ones will live forever. Until you think carefully about what immortality would mean, and you realize that any sort of immortality would either mean being static and unchanging, or eventually changing so radically you’d no longer be yourself. Both of which would, in essence, constitute death, and would thus be a rather monumental missing of the point.

It’s comforting to think that justice will be done and good people will be ultimately rewarded. Until you think carefully about what Heaven would mean. Until you realize that there’s no way to be in a state of perfect bliss created by someone else without losing your ability to make choices. Until you realize that existing in a state of bliss while others are suffering would mean a fundamental loss of the best part of you. Both of which, again, would be a rather monumental missing of the point.

It’s comforting to think that justice will be done and bad people will be ultimately punished. Until you think carefully about what Hell would mean. Until you think about questions like, “how much worse is the best person in Hell than the worst person in Heaven?” Until you consider the inherent injustice, and indeed the cruelly grotesque disproportionality, of any kind of infinite punishment for finite crimes.

And it’s comforting to think that everything that happens is part of a plan — a plan dreamed up and brought to fruition by someone who’s infinitely smart, infinitely powerful, and infinitely compassionate. Until you start realizing that being a cog in someone else’s machine isn’t the most liberating experience in the world. Until you start realizing that the idea of everything being part of an all-powerful being’s plan is simply not compatible with the idea of any sort of free will… and no amount of saying “Is too! Is too!” will change that. Until you start realizing that any being whose plans include droughts, earthquakes, famines, hurricanes, tornadoes, parasites, birth defects, genetic diseases, pediatric cancer, and people flying airplanes into buildings has got to be either pitilessly callous or gleefully sadistic, and if you’re going to call that being “good,” you are re-defining the word “good” to the point where it has no meaning.

Christina writes multiple times in the article that religion is only comforting if you don’t think about it very carefully. The more you think and question, the less any of it makes sense.

My kids have already lost two grandparents. As an atheist, I have not tempered their grief with assurances that Granny isn't really gone or that Grandaddy is watching over them. Not only do I not believe those things, but I don't want to send an implicit (or explicit in the case of my grandmother) message that grief is not warranted or normal.

What I do tell my kids is that Granny and Grandaddy can live forever through our memories. Bonnie has a special responsibility to tell her brothers about their grandparents, since Fred was not born when Dad died, and only a baby when Mom passed away, and Jack can only barely remember Mom. We tell stories, look at pictures, and watch home movies. I try to make sure my kids have relationships with their great aunts and uncles, my parents' siblings. When I look at my beautiful children, I don't need to hold onto a false idea of heaven to see that my parents are living on, right in front of me.

11 comments:

Excellent post. I did a post on Grief and Atheism last year too. I used to be religious and when I left religion behind me, I wondered periodically if I would miss it when the first tradegy hit me. My grandmother died last Christmas, and I actually found my greiving to be more straight forward as an atheist than as a christian - because now I don't have to rationalize the experience to fit with my beliefs. People die, I will miss them, they "live" in our memories and knowing our family members - we continue to see them through our shared genetics, which is kind of a fun way to remember someone. I can just grieve now, just miss someone, and I don't have to try to understand why God would take them from me, or feel selfish for wanting them here with me and not in a paradise. Grief is more real to me, more permisable to me, now as an atheist.

Well said. As an Atheist, I find that I sometimes struggle to find comforting things to say to others who are grieving. Whenever I hear people say things like "He's in a better place" or "It was God's plan" I just cringe. I truly wonder how anyone can find those phrases comforting or satisfying.

Another problem I have with the concept of heaven is the idea of perfect happiness. For example, most Christians would assume that my mom is now in heaven, but how could she be perfectly happy knowing that her youngest daughter will burn in hell someday for not accepting Jesus? The only thing I can figure is that her memories would have to be wiped to no longer include me and any other hell-dwellers she knew and loved in her lifetime. At some point, she would no longer be the same person she was. Is there another explanation of "perfect happiness" that I don't understand? Because from my point of view, an eternal happiness that can only happen after some sort of mind swipe is more like hell.

I would love to hear from Christians that have an idea of eternal happiness that doesn't require this fundamental change in the person. Or if you accept that this change would have to occur, how does heaven still hold appeal to you? And please, no "God's ways are beyond us", as that is just a fancy way of not answering the question and does not belong in a rational discussion.

Jennifer, I also find it hard to know what to say when others are grieving, particularly when I know they are Christian. I feel a little outdone saying "My thoughts are with you" or something similar, when all around are choruses of "I'm praying for you" and "He's in a better place." My condolences just don't stack up to assurances of heaven! And even though I don't subscribe to those ideas, I usually feel like those are the "expected" statements from me.

The excerpts you include use rhetoric to drive the absurdities of belief. I found myself nodding with each line.

I have been non-committal about being labeled for many years, preferring to take an academic, wait-and-see stance while researching beliefs (Buddhism, Wiccan, Yogic/Vedic, Mysticism). I'm reading about neurological reasons for belief (An Accidental Mind). The author says our brains were built for narrative. That's why our dreams seem to link into a story, despite being a smattering of nonsense. We put together reasons for our actions without realizing that we are co-opting or inventing those reasons.

Reading your post pulls out my own reserve of "what if?" beliefs. I have reasoned that I don't know what's coming or what's out there, but I probably won't understand with my limited brain. When you say you can not choose to believe in Santa Claus--no disrespect to the fond ideas of Santa--I realize I think of God the same way. It's such a fond idea; it's my mind's craving for narrative, for structure. But as your quote says:

"...any being whose plans include droughts, earthquakes, famines, hurricanes, tornadoes, parasites, birth defects, genetic diseases, pediatric cancer, and people flying airplanes into buildings has got to be either pitilessly callous or gleefully sadistic, and if you’re going to call that being “good,” you are re-defining the word “good” to the point where it has no meaning."

Of course disbelief is a choice. It's not like an inborn trait. To say it isn't a choice means you're equating it with something which really *isn't* a choice--like homosexuality. Sheesh. If you didn't make a choice about belief, that implies that those who are believers also didn't make a choice--they *have* to believe, and thus they will remain believers until they die. That's when I stopped reading.

Jude, if you read the article I linked to when I said that, you might possibly understand what I meant by it. All the experiences of my life combined with my inborn traits have led me to my disbelief, but that doesn't mean it's a choice. I cannot will myself to believe in something that my experiences and common sense tell me does not exist. Homosexuality, while also not a choice, is only determined by biology.

As far as believers not making a choice, one of the reasons I am opposed to religious indoctrination of children is that it so controls their experiences that they don't have a real "choice" in their beliefs. Hence nine out of ten children worldwide sharing the religious beliefs of their parents. Is it really a choice when an eight year old "decides for himself" to be baptized in the church he's been attending since infancy? Or when a child of an Islamic militant is sent to a training camp and "decides" to be a jihadist?

The article says, "personal secularity is primarily the result of brain function combined with access to knowledge, information, and a social setting allowing disbelief." Religious belief is the result of brain function, limited knowledge, and the "pro-religion conditioning that one receives from the community and broader society." Neither is really a choice.

I'm a homeschooling, freethinking mom raising three loud-mouthed heathens in Kentucky, co-parenting with one loud-mouthed, funny Canadian. This is my little spot to share homeschooling interests and vent about the special frustrations of secular living and parenting in a deeply religious area.